How is it that months pass like weeks? Oh yeah, I’m teaching again! As our adventures continue, I left you with Tim in San Diego where he can see Mexico and I am in Sequim where I can see Canada. Tim’s purpose for returning to San Diego was to complete a Captain’s License Intensive that was two weeks long. He had a couple weeks to get ready and then it was full-on, full time plus weekends learning and then...THE EXAMS! Yep! True to form, Tim devoured the information and learned a ton! He passed all his exams with nearly perfect scores! Tim is now a 100 Ton Inland Captain, and 100 Ton Near Coastal Mate, both include Sailing Endorsements. He wrapped up his coursework and had two weeks of socializing in the marine environment with an British friend, then family, and included our buddy boaters Steve and Janny. He had a wonderful time of decompression.

Next up? The sale of New Adventures to a new owner so we can upsize! Tim had a huge list of clean-ups, touch-ups and to-dos and then a very large amount of packing out to do since I had given up on a teaching job and had planned to join Tim in San Diego once our house had sold, there was a lot of stuff to do life with on the boat. It had been nearly two months since we had seen each other and we were not liking the solo lives we were dealing with, so Tim decided to ship some stuff, get a huge suitcase and fly home, to his new home Sequim, WA. His Captain’s License was waiting for him in the mailbox the day he arrived. It was so good to have him home.

Leaving the boat in the marina in San Diego meant that when my Christmas Break from school came we would be on the road and down there to pack out the boat and get it detailed like selling the house. The trip is 1,325 miles one way and we spent 7 days on the road driving over my 17 day break. When we arrived at the boat, there were no surprises. That was a huge relief! We needed to get so much done. We also made time for our friends Steve and Janny, as Steve had surgery while we were there and we wanted to help them out as needed. We also spent one whole day sailing with our daughter. The dolphins came to play! Danielle loves dolphins and they played off the bow while we were under full sail. They were so close and it was just a special moment, almost as if they know you love them and want to make your day special by showing up. We took no pictures or video, we just entered the moment. A moment to treasure.

Frustrations were afoot in a major way for me as I tried to figure out how to pack out all our belongings so we could present a spacious and clean boat. Somehow I thought I could pack out in one carload what a truck and three carloads brought aboard! I packed and compacted, resorted and shifted, stuffing small items into tiny nooks and crannies as our Toyota Camry sunk lower and lower to the ground. It was really looking good after six days, I was so excited! I did my best to estimate what we had left with our personal bags, toiletries, foodstuffs, pillows and computer bags. As the final load out began, decision time was upon me! It is not all going to fit, what will we leave behind? First out was the bin of galley items, that wasn’t enough. Next, our ditch bag with the medical kit, now we are getting closer, but still not enough room. Okay then? Alright, the spin-lock life vests and Yes! The rest fit in leaving space for Tim to see out the rear view mirror. There was now no bounce left in the shocks and half of a trunk load was left on the boat. Oh wait! I forgot to mention that we shipped five moving boxes of clothing and outerwear to Sequim! They were waiting for us when we returned.

I did not sleep much during this time as I was obsessing about how to make it all fit. Relief came as we left the marina and drove to Redding where all our house items are in storage. You see, unloading the boat was only half my battle, next was what to leave in storage and how in the world was I going to get what I needed back to Sequim? I needed my massage table and linens and a few supplies to come back with me. I unloaded the car, gave foodstuffs to our friends, and spent four hours unpacking and reloading the car in a completely different way from the trip up while parked at the storage units. I managed to repack the car in such a way that while it was still squatting at the bottom of the shocks, Tim said it drove better. I was able to get our most important items back to Sequim, like our nice set of kitchen knives (the furnished knives bend and are unsharpenable and dangerous) and my massage table and supplies. I also needed to retrieve some winter clothing and shoes. While I fought with packing, Tim did some client work while we were in town. We each had our battle to win that day. All in all, we left the boat looking fantastic, brought home the essentials, and enjoyed some wonderful family and friendship time.

New Adventures is on the market and ready for sale. Just as soon as we put it up for sale, the interest began. New Years Eve we received a call, then New Years day, many more calls. We arranged to have our boat shown by Steve & Janny on the 7th to three parties. We received an offer the 8th and Tim had to rent a car and head back down, 1300+ miles to get the remaining items and final touch-ups. Tim took the new owners out for a sea trial and training on all the systems. They loved the boat! He said, "Compared to my Catalina 36, this is a Mercedes." He kept saying, You have a beautiful boat!" She had much more experience sailing and extended cruising for years. She had even refurbished a larger Cheoy Lee and loves them. There is a saying in boating, "The two happiest days of a boat owners life are the day they buy it, and the day they sell it." We don't agree fully, this is a sad day, Tim was in tears a few times as he was turning it over. Another chapter is closing and we could not be more excited to see this close and turn the page. Happy New Year!

It has been far too long since our last entry. We are still going to share our time in the Sea of Cortez in February and March before returning to San Diego, CA and taking the next steps in our adventures. For now I will skip the details of our difficult return trip, known as bashing, because it’s against the wind and prevailing currents. San Diego to La Paz took 12 days, the return trip took 19 days! We are going to share with you our current land adventures! Are you ready?

A number of times here on the blog we have talked about being free to embrace adventure, loosing the tethers of countless items and things so you can be free. We arrived back in the US on Easter Sunday, April 16th at about 0415. We checked in at the Customs Dock where we had to wait for our clearance. We decided to sleep. A couple hours later we were roused from our sleep to complete our Customs Check-In. We had to surrender about 45 eggs since they were not from the US, you know those eggs that were not washed or refrigerated? Yes, those! Why so many? Because the trip back was so rough, I did not cook like I did on the way down! Oh well, life goes on. After getting settled in the Marina we crashed out! Sleep felt amazing after our long journey north. We tried not to sleep all day so we could return to a bit of the normal awake in the day and asleep at night routine.

Several days after our return, we secured our boat once we were done checking things out from the rough return, we rented a car to drive the 680 miles back to our house in Redding, CA. It was time to see how the house faired through the winter and how the students and couple living at our home cared for it. Not many seem to take care of rental property the way an owner would. The trip was filled with feelings of dread for me. When we arrived at the house it was a relief to see all was in relatively decent order. The long wet winter that included a number of high wind storms left the exterior and roof of our house in need of attention. The yard was in desperate need of spring cleaning and grooming. We still had our office at the house and that was also our room.

Tim and I rolled up our sleeves and got started with our intent set to get the house on the market ASAP. After meeting with the realtor and getting our list of things to take care of, we finally listed 8 weeks later! Days and days of working over 12 hours to pack, store and then stage the house for photos and listing for me. Tim battled the heat clock every day to replace edge shingles and fix paint in windblown areas. We also finished the stair railing in the entry way. With the skills of a good friend Jim, we completed the upgrade vision we had to tie the door, stairs and entry.

After finally getting the house on the market, Tim and I left on a much needed vacation to see family and friends in the Northwest. This was supposed to be my 50th birthday progressive party since we did not have the chance to plan a big party for me in Redding. This trip was cut short by taking care of some family business in Arizona for a week. Then right back to San Diego to hang out on the boat for a few weeks before our return to Redding for some appointments.

We did not anticipate being in Redding for such a long time and when we returned to the boat before leaving for Arizona the freezer and fridge had shut itself off! Oh gross! I will spare you the details and I will say it was days before the cabin smelled clean again!

We are again making some course changes with our lives. It was the sudden loss of both of our jobs that dropped us into this life altering adventure. Tim has the sea days he needs to apply and then test for his Captain’s License. When life has expenses and incomes are gone, there comes a point when income has to flow in again. Together we made the choice that in this next season I am going to find another teaching position so Tim will have the time and space to finish the tasks for his Captain’s License, change our corporations and finish other life details that are needed.

I agreed that I was to focus on getting the house ready for market in my areas and once the house was to market, my focus was to shift to finding work. If you are not a teacher or close friends with a teacher, teacher applications take HOURS to fill out! Some may take 10 hours! I spent the next 8 weeks filling out applications, applying for my teaching credentials in other states and keeping my pulse on 30 plus districts where I was willing to work. The locations had to be in a place close to ocean and moorage. I spent hundreds of hours in this process. Once I came to the place where I had applied for all the jobs available in our target areas and was waiting for calls to interview, I gave-up! Only a couple places responded to say positions were filled and I had one call for an interview from July that was scheduled for August.

August 1st came and something shifted! All of a sudden I had three interviews in one week! I received a call from a principal asking if I was still looking for work. I interviewed the next day and had a job offer the following day! From the three interviews: one I had not heard back from, one I had an offer from, and one that wanted me to spend a day with staff to be evaluated. The job offer in hand became my yes, it was the first application I submitted in my process, and it is the place we really wanted to live and have as our land base - Sequim, WA. My offer came late Friday afternoon and asked if I could be there by Monday, in two days’ time. It is a 700 mile drive, I went up on Monday and started New Teacher Orientation on Tuesday. While completing my training week we sold the house with a very short closing period, which we wanted.

After four days of training, I rushed back to Redding to complete what I could in three days’ time before my job formally started. Tim flew back as well. We worked like crazy for these days. We had many unique challenges such as attempting to get our 4-poster bed frame down the stairwell. We had to saw off the bottom of the legs. We added new stair treads the previous year and it raised the step just enough to keep us from being able to carry the headboard and footboard down.We signed our closing papers, and I left that evening to return to Sequim. Tim stayed on until the end of the week selling and donating furniture that we had decided we no longer wanted to keep. Followed by cleaning up the house so it looked great for the new owners. I left Tuesday and returned to Sequim where I can see Canada. Tim left the following Monday for San Diego where he can see Mexico. And the adventure continues…

Have you ever taken a trip to someplace new? How long did you stay? What if you lived on a trip for months? This has become our way of life at this point. We are continuing our series with Dharam Barrett”s article: “How To Get Your Life Back On Track When You Feel Broken” as our framework for evaluating this process of getting ourselves back on track after massive changes in our life happened in June 2016. Part 1 is about doing something that flat out scares you. Part 2 is about unplugging from the digital world so you can experience the moments that are happening all around you right now. Part 3 is about learning a new language. Part 4 is Barrett’s number 6: Take a trip. The premise is that changing your surroundings can help you find a place of healing by entering into the new scene. The trip can be any length you desire.

What has our trip looked like? Just read the blog! In summary, we purchased our sailboat in August 2016, loaded it up and sailed it from the San Francisco Bay area to San Diego, CA. Once in San Diego we made improvements, repairs and provisions. We left San Diego for La Paz BCS, Mexico on November 21, 2016. We hung out at a marina and beach club there for about 2.5 months finishing up varnish and minor repairs. We pulled out of La Paz February 19, 2017 to sail around the Sea of Cortez as far north as Loreto BCS, Mexico.

Living on a trip has been a major healing force in our lives

The trip was stellar! We anchored in amazing turquoise waters, enjoyed amazing geology, and frolicked with wild sea life! We interacted with small communities in our different anchorages and met amazing people from the local area and beyond. We experimented with our different boat systems such as water, power, and garbage/sewage while honing our boat handling and anchoring skills. This time has been challenging, rich, and nearly beyond words. We have a great deal of content for the blog that will be coming soon!

We returned to La Paz for a week long stay in the yards, which means hauling the boat out of the water to inspect the bottom. This included new bottom paint, new zincs, and a delimitation repair that was a surprise. Once back in the water we provisioned for a month and waited for the right weather window to return to San Diego, at least start the process of our return.

The uphill return to San Diego, CA, about 1,000 nautical miles took 19 days and was grueling. This sort of traveling reveals a great deal about how tough you are and how tough your boat is! We arrived in San Diego on Easter morning about 0415 tying up at the customs dock to await our check in.

In all our trip was 5 months long. We have been back for about five days and things feel so different. We have truly returned as different persons. There is so much to share and so many stories to tell. As we prepare to return to our house in northern California, our views are so majorly different. The life that we once had feels foggy in my head and our losses don’t seem so large. I still have questions about what will be next and what we have become from our adventures, but my heart is so much more peaceful and whole than when we left in August.

Living on a trip has been a major healing force in our lives. Even though our suitcase is 35 feet long, it has been the trip of a lifetime. Now that we are back, we think we need a bigger suitcase so we can have others along next time we travel taking the next trip of a lifetime. Never underestimate the power of a trip, a very long trip, to places you have never been. Barrett’s supposition is quite true in this, we do see ourselves differently now.

We are including our Mexico wrap up video with this entry so you can hear about some of the things we learned, what we wish we had on our trip, what we could not live without and more!

In Part 1 we used the article: “How To Get Your Life Back On Track When You Feel Broken” by Dharam Barrett as our framework for evaluating this process of getting ourselves back on track after massive changes in our life happened in June 2016. ​"Learning a new language may be one of the best available ways to remind yourself that there’s an entire world out there – one that operates on a completely different premise than yours. Committing to learning a non-native language proves that you could adapt and mould to one of those other realities if you wanted to – which consequently makes you feel a little less defeated by yours."

We are retooling ourselves and we really have no idea what the final products are going to be. Part 1 is about doing something that flat out scares you. Part 2 was about unplugging from the digital world so you can experience the moments that are happening all around you right now. Part 3 is about learning a new language, number 19 on Barrett’s list. Barrett says that learning a new language is a good way to expand your worldview of yourself. With four years of French textbook and classroom learning under my belt, I, Lynette, decided since we are in Mexico I am going to learn the language and be able to speak when I am out in public. I’ve employed DuoLingo as my instructor. I’ve had a great time with it!

While getting my credentials to teach English as a second or foreign language I learned when someone is in a new location and the language that is spoken by the locals is new to them, there is a silent period. This silent period lasts three weeks or more. In essence, it is culture shock. It is the time frame of making observations, making attempts at conversing and absorbing the sounds of the language. I am definitely experiencing this! I have gained a large vocabulary and I can read and write Spanish better than I can understand it. In my brain I know what to say, but when I get into the moment of needing to converse, only French comes up! I get frustrated with this, but I have to remind myself it is okay.

I am told by locals that my accent is very good. The people are so kind when you attempt to connect with them in their words. I find a great deal of patience and grace towards me from the locals as I try to speak and say what I want to say, or rather need to say at this point. When I tell the locals in Spanish that I am learning, the locals will often correct my words or sentence structure as I am speaking. This is very helpful. They will also speak slower, use less words, or use more simplistic vocabulary, just like I do when someone is learning English.

I’ve had a lot of laughs and funny looks from those I have talked with. For instance the laundry lady, I asked if she still had my soup from the week before instead of my soap. A local vender told me that I needed to use amiga for my female friends and not the term girlfriend which would imply that I was in relationship with another woman as in being a couple. I think the most interesting thing we have learned here so far is that adios, or goodbye is not a casual term for saying goodbye. It means “goodbye forever and I don’t want to see you again,” according to the locals where we are in La Paz, Mexico.

Learning a new language may be one of the best available ways to remind yourself that there’s an entire world out there – one that operates on a completely different premise than yours. ​

A couple weeks ago while on a solo shopping trip into town, I met a young lady who was interested in me and started speaking to me in Spanish. When I told her I was learning she said she didn’t speak English, only a few words. She pulled out her smartphone and started typing questions to me and I did the same. We conversed for nearly an hour as I waited for my shuttle. Its funny how we didn’t even exchange our names, just conversation. She told me about the foods I had to try before leaving and the locations of shops I could find gifts at that were less expensive than some street vendors. I really had a fun time!

My most recent experience was with the Port Captain at Puerto Escondido. When I went to check in with all the vessel documents and our passports, etc. I told him I was learning Spanish. He spoke to me in Spanish for all the official process. His friend in the office was giving him a hard time for “putting the pressure on” me by all the Spanish. It was fun. What I have noticed is that sometimes I may not be able to translate what was said to me but the answer is in my head as soon as I hear the question. I am learning to trust that a bit more. Our brains are so amazing! The Port Captain, who speaks English well, said it is really good for me to stretch myself because then I know what I know and what I don’t. Noting that at some point I may be solely on my own speaking to a person who only knows Spanish.

As we have been traveling now in the Sea of Cortez, we have not had internet or cell coverage much at all. I have missed DuoLingo because it is done over cellular data. It would be really wonderful if the computer program had an off line progression that could be uploaded when we got back to areas with cell phone reception.

According to DuoLingo, I am 13% fluent in Spanish. I’ve spent many hours with the app building up my skills. We will be moving on from Mexico at about the fourth month mark. I plan to continue working on my Spanish and hopefully find others to practice with in the near future. I can see that I am increasing my skills in the middle of all the change we have experienced. I’m feeling like this is a year of retooling myself, or should I call it a self enhancement year where I am adding to what I already have? No matter how I spin this, my life has more skills in it than it did a year ago.

First, this is a good thing to do intentionally and willfully, but having it thrust upon me tells me I did not do a good job with other opportunities in the past. I’ve learned that if you don’t seize the opportunities to do some self-work, you end up doing it by force. The same thing with your physical health, if you don’t take time to rest, you’ll be in bed sick. The Universe conspires to change me into a better person.

We did a 40-day sabbatical, where we just unplugged from email, calendars and most other social activity. The location change to San Diego helped too. We had limited internet in the marina. The initial purpose of the 30-day vacation was to celebrate our 30th anniversary, that turned into a 40-day sabbatical as a result of losing both our jobs.

The second time I really got a dose of disconnection was our trip down the coast from San Diego to La Paz, BCS Mexico; about 1000 miles. As we left the States, our first overnight between San Diego and Ensenada, my iPhone decided to do a forced update, the problem was, in order to activate the phone, it just needed to check in with a Verizon cell tower, no problem right? There are none, there is no coverage for about 750 miles of the Baja.

What I learned was two things did not happen. I did not die and the world did not collapse due to my absence of influence. So, does that mean I’m not important? Does that mean it’s essential to have access to the internet? I guess not. That sounds kind of harsh, however being over 50 years old, I’ve seen a few of my friends die, and ironically, life goes on; at least with those left behind to fend for themselves.

It is strange, but our sense of importance, even being essential is potentially overblown. Try this experiment, even use your iPhone slo-mo filming mode, having your hand in water, pull it out and see if there is a handprint left behind, even one second later. Not so much, right? So what in the world is really important? Reminds me of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, “Hello in there! what’s so important? Whatcha got worth living for?” It’s a good question. (a great movie too)

You’re probably wondering, how does he start asking you to give up tech for a week and now we’re talking about the meaning of life? Well, let’s be real, we have average of 22,000-30,000 days on the Earth, and what we do with it matters. I’ve heard myself say this to people often lately, “You can take two things with you when you die, your friends and your memories. Nothing tangible goes with you. I believe if you love well, tell your friends the truth, you’ll see them in Heaven.

Memories are the best things to create intentionally. You can create them out of nothing, and give them to people as a gift. They’ve done studies about happiness, and the people who buy things are happiest on the day they bring it home, the happiness drops dramatically as time carries on. In fact, the thing they loved, is now despised. However, if you invest in making memories and having experiences, you discover they get better with time. That vacation that was a disaster is now ‘the best vacation ever’ when your adults children are sitting around the Thanksgiving table talking about their childhood. It’s something the mind does, the pain, suffering and calamity fades out of focus to the blurry background, while the fun memories are all that remains.

We personally know really wealthy people who have many choices to do as they please. The happiest ones we know choose travel with friends as the best value versus buying that new Porsche. Now, they may go ahead and buy that car, but they’ll get it in Del Mar and drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to Oregon with an old college friend to make it a memorable experience.

I think the whole thing about unplugging, is to remove the stimulus, remove the addiction to how many Likes you got on that post or retweets and realize what is most important. Studies have shown that the dopamine addiction to social media is very real. A subtle change happens. You begin to see the person you meet, that little nudge to call that friend comes into better focus, you’re present in the moment. When you’re free from the constant pull. It’s taking in the moment called now, the only moment you really have.

Live a life worth people talking about for generations. If you want to live forever, have a meaningful life that changes those around you forever. Give the gift of experiences, make memories with others and be present to now.

This blog post series was inspired by the work of Dharam Barrett and can be read herePS at the writing of this, we’ve had no cell coverage for 9 days, we’re still alive, try it!

On our Facebook page @svnewadventures we posed the question: “If you had the opportunity to retool yourself what would you do?” We asked because we really wanted to know, we only had a few responses, which was was disappointing.

This week Tim came across an article by Dharam Barrett called “How To Get Your Life Back On Track When You Feel Broken.” Barrett lists 26 things to do to help you get back on track after events like Tim and I have experienced. This list is quite robust and we are happy to see that we had touched on nearly every one of them. Somehow instinctively we already did about 23 out of 26 and we’re committed to the last 3 after reading the article. Over the next weeks, we'll be posting details of each step we've taken along this road of retooling ourselves.

Number 24 on the list is: “Try something that genuinely scares you.” Yep, that is a work in progress for me! In June last year right after my job ended, Tim and I spent six days in an American Sailing Association Intensive to be certified to bareboat charter anywhere on the globe that accepts these credentials. There are three courses which each had textbooks that had to be read and study guides to be completed prior to our intensive. Each of the three courses have a written test and a practical test. These six days were the greatest skill challenge I’ve had in my life! Beyond the challenge of Air Force boot camp! I was so scared I wasn’t going to make it successfully, there was just so much new information and I wasn’t sleeping at night because of the mistakes I made during the day. I had a huge emotional melt down on the fifth day before going to class.

Try something that genuinely scares you

​Here’s how the week was laid out: we lived on boats for the week. We were sleeping on a 37 foot Beneteau for the first four nights. Days 1 & 2 were spent certifying on another boat, the Capri 22 for ASA 101 Basic Keelboat. Days 3 & 4 were spent sailing the Beneteau 37 for the 103 Coastal Cruising. Days 5 & 6 were spent on a 40 foot Beneteau Oceanis for the 104 Bareboat Chartering. Click the links to ASA requirements we had to master, super easy right?

Here’s some background for you: When Tim and I owned our Cal 20 Sailboat 17 years ago I was good at tacking the jib, keeping the kids happy and handling the tiller for short periods of time. I had a good working vocabulary of all the “thingy’s” on the our Cal 20 and an idea of the function of the item. I was just learning to drive this little boat under power in and out of our marina slip 14 years ago, right before we sold it to make room in our budget for a larger boat that has only now materialized. For comparison, Tim could SAIL the Cal 20 out of the slip and then back in again when we were done. Tim has spent years around many different sailboats driving, sailing and racing them. What we embarked on was nearly 100% new everything for me! For Tim this was heaven with only a little new. His challenge was dealing with my emotions. I must note that this intensive was MY idea!

During this intensive when I was crewing and doing what Tim called out, things were great! However, to be certified I had to be the skipper and call out and be fully in command. It was so hard because of our roles we have always had. To tell Tim what to do when I knew he could do it better was scary and tough. I was so afraid to mess up! I suppose my instructor did not make it a safe place for me to fail gracefully. So let me admit where I had a strength, I was better at driving the boat out of the slip than Tim and he was better at parking it in the slip. I even pulled off some better docking than Tim did. I had to prove I could do all these practical things.

One of my biggest fears was driving the boat. The first boat I ever truly drove was a 37 ft sailboat! Never mind starting small? The wheel was so big! (See the pictures) I wasn’t supposed to reach through the wheel to adjust the transmission, but I couldn’t reach it any other way! On our second day of drilling with this 37 foot boat, I was on the helm (the giant wheel), driving into an anchorage to practice anchoring. Also there in the small anchorage were a bunch of kids doing some club racing and I had to avoid them, the wind was blowing the bow of the boat closer to them and I decided to just reverse a bit and make room. After following procedure to shift into reverse and backing up, the shifter would not come out of reverse! Our instructor jerked it out and then the transmission was no longer working and we had to call it a day and sail the boat into the slip. Our instructor was not kind and said I should not have jammed into reverse, but I did not jam it, I wasn’t panicking. I was frustrated because Tim was telling me one thing, the instructor’s body language another and I was supposed to be in charge! The day before, Tim was the helmsman and I did the anchor and we reversed it so we could get the practice. Well, we should not have. We found out that the cable servicing the transmission shifter was completely corroded and just needed to be replaced, I had nothing to do with it getting stuck and breaking.

That was just our intensive. Once we purchased our own boat, I’m still doing things to overcome my fears. Fears such as: sailing at night, check! Sailing alone on watch at night, done! Spending several days on rough seas to see if I got sick, check- no sea sickness! Am I still facing fears, yes! I haven’t encountered squalls or storms, very tall seas over 10 feet, or winds over 25 knots. The marina has been a nice reprieve. There is no doubt in my mind that I am retooling into a skilled sailor and getting free from the land life.

Step out! What will you do to retool yourself?

Lynette ​For those of you that are following us here, we also have a Facebook page called S/V New Adventures @svnewadventures. We have done several videos there that have not arrived here on the blog yet! If you do social media check it out! Perhaps the video of us eating cloves of garlic!

Author

Lynette Jenne a wife of 30+ years, mother of four successful adult children, passionate high school science teacher with a masters in education. Now on a New Adventure sailing, learning and growing evermore as person.

Dreaming, what is that? Of course it is what I do while I am asleep, those pictures that run through my sleeping visual screen in my mind. My dreams in the night are sometimes profound, but most often they are just my brain defragmenting like a computer hard drive. When we ask someone what are your dreams? What we really mean is what do you want to do that’s bigger and better than you might be able to do on your own at the moment, or something that takes resources? We talk of the dream vacation; dream house; dream job; and on we can go with this list of dreams. Most of these are connected to resources, or simply cold hard cash.

As a child I played with paper dolls and Raggedy Ann Colorforms. The picture that I have in my mind at this point in my life is that I have again had my plastic Colorforms outfit stripped off of my cardboard Raggedy Ann Colorforms character. I’m waiting to see what will come next. The plastic outfit represents what I was living in, the dream I was pursuing. When I talk about my pursuit, it involves years and a lot of resources that were moved towards that dream. Just as I pulled off the outfit from my Colorforms Raggedy Ann as a child, my outfits for the most part, have been removed by the actions of someone else, not by my choice. I’m waiting to find my new outfit so I can start the dream process over AGAIN.

A cliche that keeps circling in my Facebook feeds, conversations and emails is: “Just dream big! Now is your chance! Just dream!” Right now this cliche is not serving a fruitful purpose in my life, full disclosure here, I am done with this cliche! Are you shocked? Maybe not.

I’m coining a new term: Dream Fatigue: verb: to be exhausted in or by the pursuit of dreams. I have a colorful wardrobe full of dreams that are outdated, dead, or laid aside. The cure for dream fatigue is to rest from dreaming and the pursuit of a dream. Finding peace in being myself and living in each moment are key to my recovery. How long will it take me to recover? I don’t know. It may be time to take inventory of this Colorforms wardrobe to see what messages I have come to believe, good or bad, in the last 20 years of actively pursuing dreams. This process will help ensure I am not sabotaging my dreams, or settling for less than I am, this is a practice where growth and healing can happen.

My last blog post ended with my biggest challenge: Letting go of my thoughts so I can discover new thoughts. Dreams come from thoughts that have been nourished, visited, and shared. As we share our thoughts with others, and we revisit them through sharing them again and again, our thoughts grow. Soon the stage of: “what if…” arrives, followed by the process of asking questions, doing research and finding others who can help or answer our questions. At last it forms, a full color dream to live or achieve. If we are serious, we take action and the pursuit is on. Some dreams can grow very fast in a few months and others take years to develop. Dreams also can start small and blossom into ever increasing thoughts which cause the dream to become larger and larger over time.

This is my 50th year, I want to celebrate the rest of my life with my next dream. I want to pursue it, enter it and live it until the day I die or no longer can. The next dream will form when the time is right and it will encompass the majority of whom I have become from my past pursuits. Until then, I will be pursuing the colorful moment I have right now and savor it to its fullest while residing in deep peace. I am choosing to enjoy my days until the dream fatigue has lifted.

For years if you asked me about seashores, my response is one of great joy. Seashores are one of my most favorite places to be. While growing up it was the place of glee and great adventure. We camped there, visited tide pools, and enjoyed special sites along the Pacific Coast. The smells are lovely. The sounds are amazing. There are all sorts of treasures on the shore from the sea, some living and some not. A seashore is so diverse in what might be observed or questions to be asked. What is the tide doing? What is the sand like? How big or small is the surf? How far can you wade out and still be knee deep in the water? Is the water warm or cold? On and on for endless hours of curiosity! These questions and more still circle in my mind on the shores I am walking now.

While pondering the shore this week, the seashore becomes an interesting metaphor about life. Think of all the different ways a shore is described: life is a beach; like grains of sand; shipwrecked; the water is fine; the tides of life; waves of life; and on you may go. For so long my perspective has been of me on the shore looking out at the sea. It seems while I stand on the shore and look out, that my perspective is full of questions that beg me to discover something great or new. It causes me to wonder and imagine. It feels so alive! So full of positive potential, comfort, peace, rest and refreshment.

Since Tim and I have set sail upon the sea, the shore is different now. We see the shore and what lies beyond, inland. The view is different. The questions feel different. From the sea, a shore can be a place of danger. Coming too close can mean shipwreck or peril. Many questions have to be clearly answered before going ashore. What is the water depth? Is it high or low tide? Are we anchored well? What is the wind doing or forecasted to do? The shore beckons and calls for discovery and daylight plays a part. Life is a little more complicated upon the sea near the shore.

When you leave the shore and venture out into the sea you enter an arena of the unknown in the sense that you have little to no idea what you might discover, see or encounter. Nearly all the information you have when leaving are maybes. The winds may be 10-15 knots from the northwest, the seas may be 2-4 feet building to 6 feet, etc. You simply adjust to whatever comes along the best you can. We have equipment, plans and/or training for most situations we may encounter. There is cause to wonder, but I don’t like to think about the negative what-ifs. There is plenty of potential for good or bad. It feels so powerful and intense!

You may have heard that life is safe on the shore. It’s a place of security and safety. Maybe even a sense of control in what you do on the shore. If you don’t like what’s on the shore you make decisions freely to remedy the situation. Does that seashore grow you and stretch you? Being at sea means staying away from the shore, abandoning control in many ways (you can control your responses but not the sea), and tuning in to the moment, the right now. There may be peril and great adventure ahead.

I still long for the security of the shore, that regular paycheck and my life routines. To drive my car instead of a dinghy. Dreaming about what if and working in my gardens still calls to me like a siren’s song. Obligations from the shore still come due. Oh, that we might become completely free just to live on the sea!

In pondering the shores of life this last week I was thinking about how the shore can be a bit like a trash can for the sea. Dead and seemingly useless things are expelled and left to nature to recycle. Living things wait on the shore for the tide to return and wash over them again. As I look at my shore of life, I wonder what is dead and what is alive? There are so many questions that have stolen my rest. Some cannot be answered, others will be answered at the change of the tide, and some will not have an answer until I lose sight of the shore.

My biggest challenge is to let go of my thoughts so I can discover new thoughts; let go of who I’ve been and all I have accomplished to embrace the new me with new accomplishments waiting for me. I can’t cling to what’s been, I have to embrace the new in the current moment of my life. To enter the picture frame of my view from the shore looking out into the sea leaving the shore behind to fully enter the sea of life.

What is your biggest challenge between your shore and the sea of life?

Many of you may be thinking, "I'd like to do that someday." Whether it's actually sailing off into the sunset like us or getting a hunting lodge in the mountains or the equivalent dream, things like this don't just happen. Opportunity + preparation = luck.

Preparation looks like changing our mindsets, living differently than others and swimming upstream. For starters, we decided many years ago to not go into debt for anything but a house. Thanks to some great resources on financial freedom by my friend Stephen DeSilva called Prosperous Soul. Then we started to downsize our life. We moved from a 3,500 sq ft rental house to a 1,750 sq ft rental. Two of our four children moved away to college, so we did not need the room. We bought our cars cash, used. The last one we purchased new was a company car in 2005. Which means you are always in a car that is not amazing, but a tool for getting from one place to another. No bluetooth, nav screens or other bells and whistles. We started to reduce our footprint in a lot of ways. We would save up to buy a side of grass-fed beef for $4.58 lb for any cut; so hamburger was $2-3 less per pound when you buy weekly, a fillet minion was 1/3 the price. You get the picture.

If you've ever played the game Cash-flow, the object of the game is to get your passive income to exceed your monthly expenses, then you can leave the rat-race and pursue your dreams.

Sailing is a very green way to live and travel. I know I can hear you saying, "boat stands for: Break Out Another Thousand!" Well, they don't have to. We looked for boats that were older, well built and were below the magical 40' length. Every single cost on a boat is directly related to the length. In fact, most marinas, boat yards or services base their sliding scale from 0-39' is $X per foot, 40-50' is $X+25% per foot and if you own a 50+ foot boat, you're paying more than double of what I am per foot. There is a 55' motor yacht on the end of our dock in La Paz, it's paying for an 80' end-tie at a much higher cost per foot than us. The parts, paint, varnish, engine, mast, sails etc. are all exponentially more expensive the bigger you go. A winch on our boat is pretty big, but the next size up is twice the cost. So, like our cars, we are not turning heads when we pull into ports, but we can anchor alongside boats worth a ten thousand times more than us while enjoying the same view; actually ours would be nicer since we're looking at their yacht and they're looking at ours.

​Sailing, using only the wind is very economical too. You just need enough food and water to live through the crossing of any ocean in the world. 30-45 days is a typical long crossing. If you have patience and moderate skill, you can go anywhere you want to in the sea.

Someday...when is that? It's not a day of the week, it's kinda like tomorrow. Opportunity was before us, we had both lost our jobs at the same time. We could have freaked out and hunkered down. Instead we saw the hand of Providence orchestrating our lives, knowing that He is good and has only good things for us, so we asked the question, "Why not now?" I started looking at boats that would be solid, blue-water boats (Capable of crossing an ocean without breaking or sinking) not coastal cruisers with fin keels bolted on and spade rudders. Keels do fall off and rudders break when subject to the constant gyrations of a large sea. When I found the one we have now, it was more than I budgeted for, so I sold my car and cashed in some gold to make up the difference. It's about balancing assets and liabilities. We had some assets that we could part with for this season.

A lot of our blog entries, Instagram and Facebook posts are about freedom. So many people sacrifice freedom for security. Security provided from a job is worth the lack of freedom on a day-to-day basis, right? I described my life as 'living on rails' or "I feel like a slot-car" no deviation, just faster than the previous lap. Days turn into months and years go by, all the while you are serving, working and building something. Maybe it's yours, maybe it's the company's. One of the previous owners of our boat could not break free to do what we're doing, they owned a business that they could not offload due to the financial crisis. Maybe you lost that job that seemed so secure, the big company with your pension was bought-out or collapsed. So security is not so secure. Freedom is such a big deal, people bleed for it, risk their lives getting to freedom or become refugees in order to get out from under oppressive governments. People will always desire to be free. It's no coincidence that we spent two months of our 30th anniversary on a boat called Living Free and ours is called New Adventures.

The dream remains a dream until you wake up.

​

Tim Jenné

Former CEO of Bethel Media. For over 25 years has been an IT & security professional for large accounting firms, banks and non-profit organizations. Since 2005 President, CEO of Interface Innovations Inc. where we provide business and IT consulting services. Has consulted for Verizon, American Airlines, Berkshire Hathaway, large school districts as well as many private and publicly-traded financial institutions, engineering and high-tech companies from Seattle to San Diego.

This was tonights sunset. They never get old and are always different.

January 14, 2017 La Paz, BCS, Mexico

I can hardly believe that two weeks have already passed! Tim and I have been playing with some different media ideas and have posted a few videos on our Facebook Page. I wonder how many of our readers think we are living in paradise, in the lap of luxury? I will not deny that we are in a spectacularly beautiful place! What is life really like? You must want to know. Our boat was built in 1979 in Hong Kong. It boasts teak both above and below deck. The teak on the top side needs to be refinished and sealed before we are going to be heading out again. This takes time to complete. Tim is tired of being tied to the dock, he’s ready to get out there in Sea of Cortez and see more of this amazing area. Some of you may be thinking, then get out there! Easily said!

Here is our average day: For Lynette:After sleeping, or being in bed for about 10 hours, I finally emerge from the v-berth about 0800 or so. I make my coffee and enjoy drinking it, followed by making breakfast which usually consists of oatmeal. After breakfast the dishes have to be washed and are left to air dry. Then comes tidying the cabin and completing various chores that need doing. By now it is usually after 1000. My next tasks are usually planned the night before with Tim. For the last week it has been sanding the teak for 2-3 hours. Then comes lunch followed by more dishes. Next is my afternoon coffee break. I sit down to do an hour of DuoLingo to improve my Spanish. Once it’s about 1630 or so Tim and I walk down to the beach for sunset. Some days we go to the club with friends for drinks and maybe the pool or hot tub. We work our way back to the boat to have dinner, after which there are more dishes to wash. We then spend the evening in various ways such as visiting with our friends, watching a movie on my 13” laptop, playing games, working or cleaning. Finally, we plan what we hope to get done the following day and I head off to bed sometime between 2030 and 2230.

For Tim:Tim sleeps less than Lynette does. He is usually up much earlier in the morning to catch a faster internet signal to complete his work. Tim spends about 4 or so hours each day working, as in working for dollars. Tim then begins his boat tasks of the day. The tasks can include sanding, applying epoxy, fixing rigging, adjusting other items to work better, repairing things that have broken, and on the list goes. Tim often calls it a day at lunch time and other times he gets right back to work for a couple more hours before we head to the beach. Some days he’s the jack of all trades and forward progress is halted for other repairs.

There you have it a day in the lives of the Jenne’s! Our friends Steve and Janny have a motto for La Paz: “Every day we work, we play, and we take a nap.” We are aspiring to be like them for sure. This last week I had the word linger go through my mind. According to dictionary.com it means: “(verb) loiter, delay. It is synonymous with: amble, dawdle, hang out, hang around, goof off, mosey, dilly-dally, drift.” It is the opposite or antonym of: “go, hurry, leave, rush.”

If you are personally acquainted with us, you already know how focused and driven we can both be. This drive is not in the sense of running people over, but in accomplishing things we want to get done or achieve. From June to the end of December there has been this internal pushing and pressure to hurry up and get our boat ready to just get going again. Hurry up and get out of bed, go! Come on! Get moving! I have been asking myself what is this go-go-go thing? I believe somehow I grasped the idea that my time is going to run out and I have more to do. I am not talking about my life being over, I’m talking in general about my day-to-day journey. Or we have to hurry up so the cruising kitty doesn’t run dry.

If I truly want to enjoy and experience different cultures it will require me to linger, enjoying the moment in its fullest while experiencing the absence of a pressure to go towards the next moment. We have decided to embrace lingering. It has brought us more rest and we are actually making more progress on our boat projects than before. As I sit here at the beach club, watching the sun setting as I write, I’m ready to embrace a life of lingering in all that I do, even the cleaning and sanding projects. This means I will no longer feel pressured that time or money are going to run out. How about you? Tell us what you think.

Authors

Tim & Lynette Jenné have their feet firmly planted in midair. We don't know what tomorrow brings, but are very excited to see what surprises come our way. ​Tim's favorite leadership quote is, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." Antoine de Saint-Exupery